Gene Smith

Bio

Gene Smith is Assistant Director for IES Regional Managers in the Western Region. Gene's expertise in lean healthcare programs helps healthcare organizations improve their businesses through the understanding and implementation of lean principles based on the Toyota Production System (TPS) and Six Sigma methodologies. Gene and the IES healthcare team have helped hospitals enhance their workplace organization and improve a variety of process flows including outpatient scheduling, medication reconciliation, patient registration and admissions, cancer center scheduling and billing, emergency department throughput, central sterile processing, and pre-admission testing. Gene and the healthcare team also have worked extensively with public health organizations to improve patient service times in clinics, child coordination services, and permitting processes in environmental health services. The team has worked with home health agencies to improve nurse scheduling, billing, and paperwork flow, while eliminating redundancy in processes. Gene is a faculty member of Population Health Improvement Partners in Raleigh, teaching lean for their Quality Improvement 101 courses. Gene has worked for several Fortune 500 companies, including Burlington Industries, Inc., Collins & Aikman, Inc., and Crown Equipment Corporation. Gene's experiences include plant industrial engineering manager, division staff engineer, division profit improvement coordinator, division project manager, corporate staff lean coordinator, Black Belt, corporate IE training manager and corporate project manager. Gene is also a trained Six Sigma process improvement specialist. He is a certified Black Belt, trained Master Black Belt, and teaches Red Belt and Green Belt courses. Gene has worked as a process improvement specialist in business and industry for 29 years. He is a graduate of NC State with a B.S. in Industrial Engineering and B.S. in Textile Science.